Another week, and more work

Posting from the trenches of despair...

I was going through my work stuff to try and pick out which of the many projects I have created over my 4 years at this jo would be good to include, and I came across something a little strange (and ultimately disheartening). Much of my work contains stock imagery. This is not unusual by any means, but when almost none of the pieces that I have done for the college contain original material, I'm afraid it won't look very good in my portfolio. I am afraid it will make me come across as lazy and unrefined, frankly. It could be that that is just the nature of the work, but that means I will have to balance it with something that is completely organic to me. The fine art section of my site will be a decent counterbalance to the design section, but if I am hoping to apply for a design job, I am afraid it won't be enough.

So, I thought, how can I correct this? Can I correct it? Or am I really just a copy-paster?

I'm hoping something that will distract from my over use of stock images is my attention to typography. Even under a pressed deadline, I still pay very close attention to my typography. I'm also very keen on my layout. Even if the layout is centered around an image, it's still important to have it complement, not detract from the design. Aside from that, I think I'll make a concerted effort to create orginal work in the future. It will take more time, but I think the end product will be of a higher quality.

Aside from that, the process of choosing which pieces to include in my portfolio has gone smoothly. I have maybe 8 favorite pieces of fine art, drawings mostly, around 12 pieces from work, and a couple of websites, and a few private projects (sketches and digital images) that will be good to include.

I've also decided on a website layout. It will be very simliar to this site. I like this layout because it is clean, well organized, and quite pretty. I'll have a lot of room to play with how the images display and I'll be able to keep it pretty clean and consistant. The beauty of it also is NO JAVASCRIPT! Of course I'll try to incorporate it, just for my own curiosity, but the initial build of the website won't include it, but will still function fine.

Speaking of, I have a construction notice online now. Click here to see it!

That is all for now. More to report this weekend when I get to building the actual site. =)

The Day of Set-up

Hello, and welcome to the technical details!

Today I spent time setting up my domain, webspace, and researching what I'd like my site to look like as well as features I'd like to include.

The host:
I decided to go with Dreamhost at the recommendation of her sister. An added bonus is that they are currently celebrating thier 11th anniversary, so I received an upgrade to my account for free. The other bonus is that Dreamhost is carbon neutral, so I feel good about that.

I registered www.rachelleiker.com through Dreamhost, and I'm debating on if I want to register a .net and .org with that as well. I googled my name and thier doesn't seem to be any conflict with my name, all references were to me. It's probably a good idea, but will probably have to wait until my next paycheck.

The site:
Here is a rough outline of the top-level pages I'd like on my site:
About Me - brief detail about me with links to my blog and Facebook account
Blog - links to my personal blog, and possibly Twitter account
Print - all my print media
Video - All video projects
Multimedia - Motion Graphics, web projects, and non-traditional media
Fine Art - drawings, paintings, and 3D art
Fun Stuff - here I'll put the miscellanious stuff from sketchbooks and other projects

This article has some excellent tips for generating a successful portfolio site. I'm going to thinking about what I want from the site in the coming days and base the visual feel around that. I've also found tons of good sites for the mechanics of the site, such as the CSS code and fun things I can do to enhance the presentation of the site. This article is also an excellent reference for portfolio guidelines.

I'm going to research a bit more then decide on what I want my site to look like. Expect a post early next week!

Premier Post

Welcome to the blog chronicling the creation of my personal/professional website. Expect links, musings, inspirations and such to be posted as well as progress reports, problems encountered, and other such production notes. More to come!